Demon
“Demon” makes the best of spatial awareness – you can feel the breadth of space around the property, while also succumbing to the suffocating corridors of the interior shots – but there are too many creative hiccups to maintain this taut feeling of suspense.
Suicide Squad
Plenty of people have posted their opinions everywhere regarding Leto’s performance and the lengths he went to to get into character. I’m glad they edited most of his scenes out of the final film. His Joker is a makeup smeared mess.
Phantom Boy
Unapologetically original, decidedly strange, and crosshatched with wiry animations that slink, bob, and slither, directors Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli create a charcoal version of New York City that breathes Parisian sensibilities into the mouths, exhaust pipes, and window slats of a very American metropolis.
Star Trek: Beyond
The cinematography is gorgeous, the special effects are what you would expect from a Trek film: slightly behind the curve of what other sci-fi franchises come up with, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Microbe and Gasoline
A few of his contemporaries – Spike Jonze and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, in particular – have similar compasses, but nobody rattles the paint cans quite like Gondry does.
Finding Dory
With “Finding Dory,” Pixar has made an enjoyable movie yet again. It would be easy to make a fish with short-term memory loss a one-note character. Fortunately, the titular Pacific Blue Tang (voiced by the always enjoyable Ellen DeGeneres) is not.
Independence Day: Resurgence
The aliens are back, but this time the ship is bigger, so that implies the danger level is higher. It just doesn’t feel that way. There is not much to get emotionally invested in, or interesting to watch.
The Music of Strangers
Yo-Yo Ma’s brume of calm, carefully contained humor and self-effacing humility is the perfect sidecar to the brilliant and celebrated composer’s oeuvre. He is meditative, funny, and full of humanity and wisdom – and yet he is never pretentious.
